(Newswire.net — March 27, 2013) San Antonio, TX — How CarFax came to dominate the automotive industry is a fascinating story of a genius marketing strategy shaped perfectly by a keen understanding of human behavior. According to at least one expert marketing consultant, it also serves as a cautionary tale for business owners who don’t yet realize the same strategy is in use again today – and that it’s so powerful it can either make or break their businesses.
“When I wrote ‘The Marketing Strategy Small Business Needs – To Avoid Being “carfaxed”’, my intent was to illustrate the marketing plan millions of small business owners are being manipulated with today. Most aren’t even aware it’s happening to them,” says Steve Houston, owner of NetCentricity, a leading internet marketing consulting firm. “Business owners typically have their hands full running their businesses and don’t have as much time as they’d like to stay current on many issues important to them.
“The genius marketing strategy CarFax used in the 1980’s to become a dominant player in the used car market,” Houston continued, “is essentially the same marketing strategy small business in America is seeing Google, Angie’s List and other big internet players using today, and every business is caught in the middle. This new dynamic has huge implications for them, and as an advocate for the small-to-medium-sized business owner, I felt they needed to know.”
Houston’s provocative article goes on to explain how a company’s professional ‘reputation’ has now become the new benchmark for shoppers seeking trustworthy local business partners, and that highly influential types of “social proof” like online customer reviews, satisfaction ratings, and testimonials are swaying buying decisions toward certain companies and away from others like never before. Customer reviews posted on Google Places, Angie’s List and many other business directory sites are defining the public reputations of companies today – and some business owners are beginning to realize they’ve lost control.
“The one marketing strategy small business owners must at least become aware of is called ‘reputation marketing’,” Houston continued. “Today, as many as 87% of all prospective buyers go online first to find and research local companies before choosing one to patronize. With hundreds – if not thousands – of prospects searching for your type of company every month, it’s absolutely critical that they like what they see written about you online. The importance of making a good first impression online just cannot be overstated.”
‘The Marketing Strategy Small Business Needs – To Avoid Being “carfaxed”’ is a cautionary tale about the incredible reach and raw power of the internet, and how “trust” and “reputation” have become the new standards by which every company, whether they like it or not, is now judged online. Houston closes by describing how the CarFax’s highly effective marketing strategy can, instead, be turned around and leveraged by businesses for their competitive advantage.
“Companies that start following – right now – the four key steps I outline in the article,” Houston concludes, “will become more profitable, quickly leap ahead of their competitors online, and position themselves to dominate their local markets. This is the one marketing strategy small business owners who truly “get it” are investing money in – and they’re seeing it more than pay for itself.”
Read the full article by going to http://netcentricity.com/2013/marketing-strategy-small-business-owners-must-adopt
About Steve Houston and NetCentricity
Steve Houston owns and operates NetCentricity, a private internet marketing consultancy that develops, implements, and manages highly effective marketing strategy small business owners use to quickly grow their companies and capture more market share.
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